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Polaron posted:The most recent explanation seems to have been both side's agents playing contract chicken without actually talking to their clients until it was too late yikes! Season 5 is... I mean the season 4 ending was weird and felt very obviously "oh poo poo we have a new season! uHhhhhhhHhh". I am not really a fan of the "I'm in your computer system therefore I can immediately gain access to everything and understand the wire protocols and blah blah blah. It always feels icky to me. Aside from the upheaval, it is very comfy. I missed a few episodes and now my folks are ahead lol. I feel less invested in this season as a whole, so it's difficult for me to go "Oh, I should catch up". It's not bad, it's just different, I think. I'm extremely glad gababool got vidicated in the end of season 4. The telepaths part was a really good trick, and the win was a bit fast but felt gratifying.
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Mar 26, 2022 22:20
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alexandriao posted:Season 5 is... I mean the season 4 ending was weird and felt very obviously "oh poo poo we have a new season! uHhhhhhhHhh". I am not really a fan of the "I'm in your computer system therefore I can immediately gain access to everything and understand the wire protocols and blah blah blah. It always feels icky to me. Early season 5 is iffy for a lot of reasons but if you've made it this far you absolutely owe it to yourself to catch the second half.
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Mar 26, 2022 22:43
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ultrafilter posted:Early season 5 is iffy for a lot of reasons but if you've made it this far you absolutely owe it to yourself to catch the second half. 2nded. the first half of s5 is the show finding its footing again so it's like a speed run of the worst parts of S1 all over again. but when it finds its footing it is quite good. Doesnt hit the highs of seasons 2-4 but it is still solid.
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Mar 26, 2022 22:46
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loling at Lyta being totally undressed under her psycop gown. Dress for the job you want I guess? Do you think Bester wears undies or just goes totally bare assed
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Mar 27, 2022 00:05
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Finding out Bester has been swinging freely for five whole seasons... holy poo poo, I see why yall are interested in the blind watch thread... this changes everything........
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Mar 27, 2022 00:19
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alexandriao posted:I am not really a fan of the "I'm in your computer system therefore I can immediately gain access to everything and understand the wire protocols and blah blah blah. It always feels icky to me. I've wondered if this was a jab at all the malfunctioning self aware holodeck episodes in star trek
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Mar 27, 2022 02:48
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alexandriao posted:I am not really a fan of the "I'm in your computer system therefore I can immediately gain access to everything and understand the wire protocols and blah blah blah. It always feels icky to me. This and the magic life transfer machine from S1 are the two bits that remind me most that scifi is just really dumb sometimes. B5 doesn't generally do that kind of technobabble handwaving and it feels so out of place, like a plot convenience from TNG or a bad Doctor Who episode. Sweevo fucked around with this message at 10:42 on Mar 27, 2022 |
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Mar 27, 2022 10:37
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Sweevo posted:This and the magic life transfer machine from S1 are the two bits that remind me most that scifi is just really dumb sometimes. B5 doesn't generally do that kind of technobabble handwaving and it feels so out of place, like a plot convenience from TNG or a bad Doctor Who episode. On the other hand, I'm always up for watching fascists get wrecked - even imaginary ones - so I like the scene
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Mar 27, 2022 10:49
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They could still have done it in a better way than "I am a magic computer ghost deleting ur filez!"
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Mar 28, 2022 10:57
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Sweevo posted:They could still have done it in a better way than "I am a magic computer ghost deleting ur filez!" Except they couldn't have because that part was rad af
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Mar 28, 2022 14:54
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Mar 29, 2022 21:44
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S05E26: OH poo poo HERE WE GO AGAIN Except, not really... "Have you told him this yet?" "No, I was thinking of making it a surprise. I even booked the seat right next to his. It will give me someone to talk to during the flight." "Londo once told me he hates it when people talk to him on long flights. He prefers to sleep." "I know. Hahahahaha"  Despite the situation, G'Kar and Londo being best buddies is just... finally... this is all I wanted... The thing about that scene is you could show it to someone else, but, not really. Because the background of the characters matter so much to making that scene stand out and be so important. - Garabaldi turning out to have actually died of alcohol IRL makes these episodes a lot... different, huh
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Mar 31, 2022 21:00
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alexandriao posted:S05E26: OH poo poo HERE WE GO AGAIN there's more??? I kid, I kid.
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Mar 31, 2022 22:16
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Hey folks, I'm back, and I've resumed the watchthrough -- I was very near the end of Season 3. But I have bad news for the thread: due to getting stranded in a hotel room halfway across the country for a few days with nothing to do but binge-watch TV, we watched a ton of episodes in a row and I'm afraid I don't have full writeups for each one. (Side note: the hotel TV didn't let you into the settings menu so there was no way to turn off the motion smoothing and oh my god, that poo poo makes the show look awful.) But here are a few brief reactions I remember having for specific episodes: s03e22 - Z'ha'dum - The Shadow-collaborating humans are clearly being evil, but they have a point -- war has always fostered innovation. s04e01 - The Hour of the Wolf - THANK you, G'Kar, you're the only one who seems to remember that there's a second person missing, everyone else is all Captain Captain Captain. And I really like the characterization of Daffy as one of Garibaldi's "household gods". Also, the White Star was quite dramatically destroyed, but hey, no problem, just get another identical one and carry on. Can't really complain though, the same thing happened to the Defiant over on the other space station show.  s04e03 - The Summoning - Holy poo poo the Vorlons.  s04e05 - The Long Night - Vir Cotto, imperial assassin. Never would have seen that one coming. s04e06 - Into the Fire - This... isn't actually the series finale, right? There's still a whole bunch of show left? ...You're SURE this isn't the finale? Because good goddamn does this ever feel like a series finale. s04e07 - Epiphanies - Okay, cool, an episode to remind us of all the plot threads that DIDN'T get wrapped up last week. There's more than it felt like, it really seemed like the previous episode had put a bow on drat near everything. s04e08 - The Illusion of Truth - You idiots, stop saying things that can be taken out of context so drat easily. (later) Told you so. s04e11 - Lines of Communication - The "blurry guy" special effect for the Drakh looked pretty bad, I'm hoping that was partially an artifact of the motion smoothing on the drat hotel TV. s04e14 - Moments of Transition - I was wondering if they were ever going to reference the Worker Caste in anything other than an offhand kind of way. (Has a Worker character ever even had a name or a spoken line of dialogue?) Anyway, I approve of this conclusion. And over in the telepath storyline, I can't help but wonder if Lyta's thing (psi abilities got goosed by a Vorlon and the Corps wants to know how it was done) is a drop-in replacement for where Talia's story would have gone in JMS's original plan, what with her getting the telekinesis and all that. And that's as far as we got before finally getting a flight home. Overall reactions to this whole part of the show: I know I was flying through episodes quickly, but still, it feels like the whole Shadow War got wrapped up fast, really over the course of just a few episodes. And since it happened, there's no longer a single narrative thrust underlying all the various plotlines. So now, picking two big ones as an example, the Minbari drama and the Psi Corps situation don't really feel connected anymore, it's more like they're independent stories in a shared universe, involving characters who happen to know each other. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great show and I'm still enjoying the hell out of it, but it kind of feels like it's lost something.
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Apr 6, 2022 23:36
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You might say the show is in a… moment of transition to something else.
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Apr 7, 2022 01:32
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It's a very dense season.
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Apr 7, 2022 06:25
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IIRC they thought season 4 would be the end so they were trying to wrap it up quickly FWIW, everyone else was 100% right, you owe it to yourself to watch to the end... don't wish to say more *disappears like Ambassador Voltron*
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Apr 7, 2022 06:30
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alexandriao posted:IIRC they thought season 4 would be the end so they were trying to wrap it up quickly This is true but only matters later. Most of the season happens as planned.
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Apr 7, 2022 06:45
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Powered Descent posted:s04e11 - Lines of Communication - The "blurry guy" special effect for the Drakh looked pretty bad, I'm hoping that was partially an artifact of the motion smoothing on the drat hotel TV. They stuck the blurry filter on because JMS hated the Drakh costume they came up with but didn't have time or cash to get a new one made. But he also hated the blurry effect, so they never did it again, either.
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Apr 7, 2022 07:52
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s04e15 - No Surrender, No Retreat
s04e16 - The Exercise of Vital Powers
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Apr 9, 2022 03:18
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s04e17 - The Face of the Enemy
s04e18 - Intersections in Real Time
s04e19 - Between the Darkness and the Light
e: One more thought on the last episode: If Ivanova has eidetic memory, why was she having such trouble a few episodes ago remembering how to say things in Minbari? Powered Descent fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Apr 10, 2022 |
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Apr 10, 2022 02:13
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drat, telepaths, you scary.
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Powered Descent posted:s04e17 - The Face of the Enemy meant to say that Intersections in Real Time is indeed in real time
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Apr 10, 2022 02:25
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During the original run there was a roughly five month gap between s4e18 and s4e19.
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Apr 10, 2022 02:50
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Powered Descent posted:
It's like the interrogation in 1984. They could easily make him feel or say something, but they want it to be real. They want Sheridan to truly believe the lies.
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Apr 10, 2022 12:19
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Continuing to plow through to the end of the season at high speed. s04e20 - Endgame
s04e21 - Rising Star
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Apr 10, 2022 19:16
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Production backstory: while B5 was planned as a 5 year arc, early on in the production of season 4, it was not clear that the show would be renewed for a fifth season, so a lot of the back of season 4 is “wrapping up the threads that should have been the first half of season five.” They even shot the series finale! Once they did get the season 5 order, they doubled back and shot a new finale for S4. There are some other impacts from this that you’ll see once s5 starts…
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Apr 10, 2022 19:28
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Powered Descent posted:s04e21 - Rising Star The series was cancelled during season 4 so JMS was left with the choice between rushing to finish everything up in four years or possibly never finishing. He chose the former.
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Apr 10, 2022 19:29
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s04e22 - The Deconstruction of Falling Stars
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Apr 11, 2022 04:39
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Powered Descent posted:s04e22 - The Deconstruction of Falling Stars When they got the season 5 order, and pushed the finale they had already shot back to the end of season 5, this is the episode they made to take its place. Make of that whatever you will.
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Apr 11, 2022 05:28
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Powered Descent posted:[*] All right, I guess the stone age monks aren't THE END the end, there's our mysterious fellow a million years hence who spent his last few minutes reviewing old Babylon 5 episodes through a 1997 interface... which, I've come to appreciate, isn't the worst way to run out Earth's clock. And that last guy out the door before the sun blows was wearing a human-styled Vorlon-ish encounter suit, which was kind of neat. It seems humans have reached a similar state to what the First Ones did. So this "New Earth" that they're going to, is that outside the galaxy like where the Vorlons and Shadows and Lorien went? Or are the humans still hanging around and providing cryptic clues to the hapless younger races that still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea? According to JMS....New Earth is the old Vorlon Homeworld, Humans having finally reached a level of tech that allows them to turn off the automated defenses the Vorlons left behind. And yes, the implication is that the combined Human/Minbari future humans have taken up the stewardship of the galaxy to watch over the younger races...presumably for however long they can manage it before they gently caress it up like the Vorlons and Shadows did and some future Sheridan equivalent kicks them beyond the Rim too. jng2058 fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Apr 11, 2022 |
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Apr 11, 2022 07:25
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jng2058 posted:According to JMS....New Earth is the old Vorlon Homeworld, Humans having finally reached a level of tech that allows them to turn off the automated defenses the Vorlons left behind. And yes, the implication is that the combined Human/Minbari future humans have taken up the stewardship of the galaxy to watch over the younger races...presumably for however long they can manage it before they gently caress it up like the Vorlons and Shadows did and some future Sheridan equivalent kicks them beyond the Rim too. You might want to fix your quote there.
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Apr 11, 2022 08:40
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Jedit posted:You might want to fix your quote there. Well spotted. Fixed.
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Apr 11, 2022 08:45
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Powered Descent posted:s04e22 - The Deconstruction of Falling Stars If anything, that it's disguised at all is the unrealistic part - Azov, various police forces in the US, etc... jng2058 posted:Well spotted. Fixed. Nearly 
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Apr 11, 2022 10:55
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Powered Descent posted:Who the hell programmed this simulation of 500-year-old brains in such a way that they could mentally hack the whole drat system? Haven't you people ever heard of sandboxing?
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Apr 11, 2022 11:31
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Powered Descent posted:
Carrot and stick, man. I feel like it's sending precisely the message it's meant to.
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Apr 13, 2022 00:00
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Polaron posted:Carrot and stick, man. I feel like it's sending precisely the message it's meant to. "Hey remember that guy who said I was being manipulated by aliens to invade Earth? He may not have been entirely wrong!" was always my read. Midjack fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Apr 13, 2022 |
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Apr 13, 2022 03:55
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One thing we learned from
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Apr 13, 2022 04:06
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s05e01 - No Compromises
s05e02 - The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari
s05e03 - The Paragon of Animals
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Apr 13, 2022 22:35
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Powered Descent posted:s Dream G'Kar is all of Londo's guilt made manifest. And Londo got a lot of guilt.
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Apr 14, 2022 19:59
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Catching up to a couple of writeups after seeing the episodes a week or so ago; giving my reactions as best I recall them. s05e04 - A View from the Gallery
s05e05 - Learning Curve
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Apr 24, 2022 06:50
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